Demo Best Practices: Ask Before You Show
The best sales engineers ASK before they SHOW. At some point in every demo your prospect is going to ask: “Does your product do XYZ?” What you do next can make or break the deal. Story time!
SCENARIO 1
You are giving a demo and your prospect asks, “Does your product support role-based access controls and permissions?”
Your product does support RBAC, so you excitedly say, “Yes! Let me show you!”
You immediately proceed to show how to set up user roles and teams and data permissions.
You log in as a user from EMEA and show how they only can see data for EMEA.
You log in as a user from APAC and show how they only can see data for APAC.
You then log in as the Global VP user and show how she can see all the data.
Ta-daaaa!
You ask, “Now that I have showed you our RBAC capabilities, can you see how they would help you restrict access to your data across your teams?”
Your prospect responds with a frown, “That doesn’t work for us. We are an open team and everyone should have access to all data. Looks like a lot of complexity that we do not need nor would want to pay for.”
You sadly realize that you:
❌ Wasted 10 minutes of valuable demo time
❌ Made your product seem more complex than it is
❌ Got your prospect thinking that they are going to be overpaying for features that they don’t want
SCENARIO 2
You are giving a demo and your prospect asks, “Does your product support role-based access controls and permissions?”
Your product does support RBAC, but you calmly say, “I’m curious about that. Can you tell me more about your RBAC needs?” Then you wait…
Your prospect responds, “We are an open team and everyone should have access to all data. I want to make sure that my team doesn’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get access to the data they need.”
Knowing the reason behind their question, you confidently say, “The default setting in our product is that everyone has access to all data. No hoops. No jumping. No configuration required. Just instant access for everyone to all data.”
Your prospect replies, “That’s perfect. Exactly what we need right out-of-the-box! I looked at one of your competitors, and their product seemed really complex. Lots of configurations that we don’t need. You seem like a much better fit so far.”
You smile as you realize that you:
✅ Showed how your product meets your prospect’s needs (without even showing anything)
✅ Saved 10 minutes of valuable demo time
✅ Got your prospect thinking how easy your product is to use
✅ Created a competitive differentiator (even if your and your competitor’s products have the exact same RBAC features)
ASK before you SHOW! 🙌
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